Finished a Novel using the Kindle iPhone App: Finally an eBook Reader I Can Use

I tried mobile ebook reading years before Amazon’s Kindle was announced (probably long before its concept was scribbled on a whiteboard). My first ebook reading experience was using Microsoft Reader on a Microsoft Windows Mobile Pocket PC 2000. Microsoft even provided a bunch (perhaps 2 dozen) free normally-for-fee novels to entice people to try it out.

I started but never finished reading a couple of interesting novels. The problem is that the technology wasn’t quite there nearly a decade ago. The screen brightness/contrast couldn’t be adjusted quite right for comfortable long periods of reading text. The Pocket PC’s battery didn’t have quite enough battery life for long sittings either. I actually bought several portable proprietary chargers to deal with general battery life issues.

This year, nearly a decade later (as I mentioned earlier), I finally finished reading an ebook on a mobile device. Actually, two devices. As I’ve mentioned here in past blog entries, I haven’t been able to justify buying a Kindle given how infrequently I have time to read novels. However, I installed Amazon’s Kindle for iPhone ebook reader on my iPhone and iPod touch when it was released in early March of this year. And, I bought an ebook for it at the same time in preparation for a pair of conference trips I had scheduled that month. I carried a “real” paperback book for both trips and read the ebook after finishing the “real” book during my long flights.

Since then I’ve read the ebook in spots now and then and finally decided to take some time this past weekend to finished the last couple of chapters. The experience of reading an ebook on my iPhone and iPod touch (Amazon’s WhisperSync is a great service) was a good one. Adjusting the screen’s brightness down to a comfortable reading level helped a lot I think. And, the simple touch page turning process works well. I enjoyed the drawn out experience (nearly 6 months) so much that I bought the second novel in the trilogy to read on the iPhone and iPod touch too (Star Trek: Destiny trilogy by David Mack).

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